The intervention is based on an ethnographic analysis of the Debian community, which devotes itself to the development of free software (debian.org). In particular we will show how members of this community are put into "dialogue" with, and are associated though a variety of texts, archives, documents concerning the organisation of conditions, exchange and cooperation within the Community.
These documents are on the one hand presented as a series of codes and standards that normalize behavior, on the other hand they also are a means of transportation, they form the medium with which members of the Debian community communicate. By engaging in this practice, by confronting oneself to these documents, a sense of involvement in the project is being constructed. We try to show how this "textual practice" forms a varied and complex part of the initial conditions of the organization of the Debian community.